WE ARE HARMED by OUR PAST WHEN …

We are harmed by our past when we are not aware of its impact on our present and future … personally and collectively.

The scientific field of psychology continues to prove this theory, especially through the practice of psychotherapy and psychological profiling. History reveals that without change, what happened before will happen again. The Bible also affirms the same premise of repetition though the past influence is referred to as a generational influence.

Parents are not perfect. They are people who bring their own baggage to raising a child … unless they first examine their childhood and youth to discover the patterns established when they were being raised.

However, the purpose is not to lay blame on parents, but to recognize what was helpful, but also what was harmful … and needs to be recognized and healed in order for the same baggage …. negative and limiting patterning not to be passed on to the next generation. This process, used in psychotherapy empowers us to “connect the dots” especially the dots related to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are limiting, hurtful, and even destructive to ourselves and others in all of our relationships … family, friends, workmates, acquaintances, and also greatly impacts how we relate, or not, to leadership in schools, community, and even politically.

The same applies to a culture. Repeating the past just for the sake of repeating the past reveals the conditioned limited thinking that only the past is worth repeating … even if it is harmful … because it is familiar.

But we are not our parents and our children are not us. We are not the global nation we were and we do not have to continue to be what we were or are now.

Unfortunately most people do not have the luxury of time and finances to undergo individual psychotherapy to help them discover what their underlying issues are connected to their parents’ influence and the consequences the unconscious or subconscious conditioning is creating in their lives.

However, fortunately there is another more logical, practical, and compassionate way to not only help people discover and heal from their negative conditioning and unfulfilled needs. The way is to establish the universal truth that every life is valuable … worthy of respect … so we can start putting into place guides and tools to help people realize with the way our world has functioned it is inevitable they have issues from their past … that they will need to discover, work with, and transform so they do not inflict their child(ren) with their pain.

We are doomed to keep going round and round in circles without evolving if we refuse to acknowledge our humanness, frailties, imperfections, and the fact we don’t know it all … and don’t have to. First, we need to know who we really are ourselves before we can successfully guide and help others.

Even after I worked with a psychologist for a year and a half, the process of unraveling who I really was has taken most of my life since we live in a culture with specific, narrow expectations that I didn’t fit into in the first place and as a result caused a series of very unfortunate events that kept me from the wholeness finally … and recently achieved.

Life is complicated enough … especially with what can seem like a continuous learning curve … but that is what life is and the idea that has hurt most of us is that we climb to get to a certain point and then want to just coast for the rest of our lives … but coasting will leave us feeling unresolved at the end of life because we did not fully live … we did not realize our potential because we can deluded by the fallacy that life is just about getting by … even if that means doing the same thing over and over again … even when we know it isn’t fulfilling … leaving us frustrated and angry to the point that what drives us more is primarily our concern for ourselves.

Scientists say we use 10% of our brains, so in other words we have the capacity to not continuously repeat history … our personal or collective. We have the ability to stop harming ourselves with our past by creating a different present and future. Having the desire to do so is the first step. Respecting our life and the lives we are responsible is one driving force … the other is love. What it comes done to is our courage to face our past … personal and collective … with compassion and not blame so we can create a better present and future.

Click on the link below starting Tuesday, January 27, 2015 to DISCOVER … and SUPPORT … the INDIEGOGO crowd funding campaign for the global initiative, Connecting the Dots … with The RESPECT PRINCIPLE … because every child … every person … should know, by their own experience, they are valued … RESPECTED.